"We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another."
She was perfectly content to lay in her tree and watch the storm roll through but she knew her da and mam would worry. "Five more minutes." She says to herself, sliding her hands under her chin as she settled herself in to watch the storm rage. The wind gusted towards her and she could just barely see the very tips of the trees beneath the storm clouds, bending. She imagined she could hear their groans.
A smile curls her lips and she settles herself in to watch it roll through.
She rubs her hand across her face, blinking herself awake as the fat heavy rain drops fall on her face. She blinks her eyes open, disoriented as she didn't remember falling asleep, but her body was stiff as if she had been there for hours. The wind was whipping her hair across her face and her clothes were soaked. How had she managed to stay asleep for so long?
"Oh crap." Mam and da were going to worry.
She started to shimmy her way backwards to the trunk but before she could get very far, to get away from the near top of the tree that she was in to a safer part down, a bright light blinds her and a sudden rumble deafens her.
And then she remembers falling..
Down.
Down.
Down.
She awakes again, more disoriented before and in much more pain. She groans aloud. Her body begging her not to move. She feels as if she had fallen from her favorite tree, rolled down her favorite rocky beach and whacked her head again a tricky tree branch all at once.
She hurt EVERYWHERE.
She very carefully opens an eyelid, peering out into the forest. At least that hadn't hurt. Mam! Da! With a start, realizing with the sun out shining that she had to have been out for hours and they would have been looking for her. She jumped to her feet, but staggers as her body doesn't work the way it ought to. She falls, hurting everything all over again and with wild eyes manages to catch a glimpse of her body. Four legs, a tail, and a different kind of vision that she would have noticed immediately had her face not been pressed into the ground. She could cry, missing her hands already, and wondering what the hell had happened.
She gets up, more carefully this time, staggering like she was a newborn, although her body was bigger than the last time she had been here. Now she seemed somewhere between being a yearling and a two year old with still entirely too much growing to do. Even the cosmos were against her growing, as she had just made it to her 10th summer in the other place. She would never be done growing and can only wearily sigh as the sights and sounds of this place came back to her. She would have rather woken up in the Jungle, but here was just as good...well almost.
So she stands there, peering through brown eyes that seemed to hold all her emotions open like a book and wonders what she ought to do.
"The truth, it is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution."
Willa